filesystems

[Joe Harrington]

Does a typical Linux system or Mandrake boot using the ext2 filesystem? Do
all filesystems have or use commands such as stat, read, write and chmod. I
am trying to figure out without looking through the code how a VFS
filesystem works. I am assuming that it does not use the major minor system,
for faster access to data? On my system I have:

            ext2
            msdos
nodev proc

Yes I did a man filesystems, man virtual filesystems, and manVFS. What does
the nodev stand for? I have seen other systems containing filesystems such
as:

            ext2
            minix
            msdos
            vfat
nodev proc
nodev nfs
            iso9660
            ufs
nodev autofs
nodev devpts

Basically, do you mount a VFS filesystem, does it keep pages in RAM longer
than other filesystems. How would a VFS filesystem handle system calls such
as "stat" or "open"? I am just looking for something that can easily help me
visualize the VFS process.